


Dark-bringer

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Babies, Brotherly Love, Codependency, Cosmology, Episode Related, Episode: s11e01 Out of the Darkness Into the Fire, Flowers, Season/Series 11, Souls, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:52:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are more souls over there, Death says, and the reapers listen. </p>
<p>Sometimes it's more like sowing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark-bringer

There are more souls over there, Death says, offhandedly, and the reapers listen, the monsters too. Sometimes it's more like sowing. 

Elsewhere, Winchesterland stands waiting.

*****

Oh, Dean says, looks at the baby and sees another, bundled out of a fire.

She's a cardinal, isn't she, beaked red as sin on her little shoulder, close to the bone. 

She sends angels into a rage, sets one of them flashing, form to form in his freezing photons. 

_Amara mea, my bitter bloom_.

This is the beginning. The garden. The fall.

*****

The road spills out like a bad dream, hissing. There’s a roadblock, of course; of course there are dead. There’s a hospital.

Sam said, _we have to_ —

Was lost in a wind, sort of, weatherlike rushes.

Because _Winchester_ means disaster, matter, anti-, explosion, aversion.

This is a dark before there were stories.

_Change._ The word’s too small.

*****

Death sweeps clean an old doorstep, no door.

_More souls over there and none for you, little one, for you are the bringer, the thing itself, the un-thing; you are chaos, beginning, ending, no time but void, no void but time, not infinite but without bounds; little germ, welcome to the world._

*****

You can bet they know, the witches, they've always known, because this is the Old Dark, _nhywyllwch_ , _dorchadas,_ the one they've always known would birth herself again. Rowena, robed, running, clutches herself a codex, nails to palms. Sweetbitterness in the aerosphere. Little sips, slow breaths; don’t swallow quick for no vessel’s built to bear--

When her son was born, well, how does a mother, witch or no, know her babe'll king hell, someday. A squalling thing full of petty darks. A pocket of rye, a scattering.

Nothing to this.

*****

Night Sam was born there was a birthmark, but it couldn’t be seen. 

John, Mary whispered, breathed, he’s marked. She couldn’t say it aloud.

The baby wailed. Nothing on his little shoulder, sternum; eyes daybreak-bright.

*****

Death stitches himself together from dust, atoms, homeomeries. It isn’t easy, _Dean_ , but it can be done.

You owe me: blackberry pie; truffle fries, charred black.

*****

They’re nearly hand-clutched when Darkness whispers that they’re bound. _I am you. In you. In, well, everyone; ontology, you know._

_You and your brother, not so long ago, watched the light-bringer pour into the world like so much, so much--_

Dean was born at dawn.

No-one’s ever pointed this out to him, emphasized it like, as though it meant something.

Death sighs, ticks off timelines, brick-knocks old souls together, sighs.

_Cuir dorchadas air fògairt_ , faintly whispered, farthest earth-corners.

Right.

*****

Oh she's beautiful, the neighbors would squeal, like a little bird.

I didn't know you were adopting? Didn't take you for the kind.

Carry a handgun, not a diaper bag, is that it? Is what Jenna’d say.

Her garden’s always been full of red flowers, and night-blooming whites, her favorites. Never thought she’d marry, mother. 

Dean Winchester stitched and her flesh pulled together like sense. This is it. 

Joy comes in the morning, and only a moment for tears.

*****

Morning, some time ago, turquoise-painted trailer park:

Sam? Sammy. Wake up.

Dean’s hands are warm. Sam's laid out on a patch of grass.

You alright?

I’m fine.

It's their childhood, the whole haunted back forty of it: Dean brings; Sam casts out.

Sammy with a flashlight. Dean with a blanket. Sam with blood. Dean with fire. Dean with a hammer. Sam with fists. Blades.

There’s a weird balance, always has been.

Boys? John-gruff, pre-command.

(You shoot me son, you do it.

When I go darkside--

You’ve got to promise.

Kill me.)

His sons are light-eyed, sometimes; sometimes in shade.

_For his anger lasts only a moment._

*****

Angelic upheaval is like. Well. Heaven’s rooms are ringing, a wild blooming of sound.

It’s gone viral, whatever it is.

The midwest rolls with it. There's a storm; run for cover. Run from middle America like your lives depend. They do.

_Amara mea, my little seed._

*****

There’s a roadblock. There are dead. There’s a hospital.

Trapped. Smell of antiseptic, electric box, crackles. Dark inside and banging out. Teeth.  

Maybe it's homeopathic, is what Sam thinks, the dark; take the blood of the damned and re-brand it at the pulse. Find it. Beat back by taking in. Heat for a fever; cold for chill; feed it. The Sam in the mirror isn't afraid, seen angels fall, been to hell, been to hell, cured demons, fallen on knees in sin is a warrior of god; some god anyway. Sam in the mirror marked, sick with souls. To save. ( _But my brother_.) Some little part of him wails, infant, goes quiet.

*****

Death sighs. Something opens beneath. It's an old old verse and so much for the sowing. But there's always another night, and this is it.

More souls over there. Priceless. Handwave. Earthly desires. Sigh. Fried dough.

Dark comes in the morning.

Somewhere else, Winchesters.

*****

It’s not a real unmaking. More like an uncoupling; take yin from the other, you know, hold them apart.

Dean, Sam says, Dean. There's road-dust on his shoes, not new. Ozoned storm-tang on his breath. Muscle memory in the clutched brother-hands. Little catches of dark. Bruise pools.

Sunlight comes down on a field of flowers and there isn't any night, just Dean, prone as horizon.

Sammy? 

Fingers a baby’s, a toddler’s, scrape gentle at skull, sense-memory. The whole earth knows. It trembles with knowing.

Where...what happened?

Sam's shadow falls over his brother, solstice-soft; it's already been too long. 

Just—

Kneel. Brush it back, the dark.

Shh, there’s yarrow in your hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Cuir dorchadas air fògairt—Scottish Gaelic, banish the dark
> 
> Dorchadas, nhywyllwch --Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, darkness
> 
>  
> 
> [Psalm 30](http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-Chapter-30/)


End file.
